Opinion: Partisan politics is even infecting the craft beer industry

A boycott group rises up against Ballast Point Brewing and, alas, they’ve got it all wrong

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Constellation Brands acquired Ballast Point Brewing of San Diego in 2015.

By

JasonNotte

Columnist

Beer companies and industry organizations are pouring a whole lot of money into lobbying, but boycotting them won’t help if their donations and offending issues don’t align.

Earlier in March, my weekend was interrupted on two occasions by friends demanding to know why Constellation Brands Inc.
STZ, -0.75%
was donating to Wisconsin Republican and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. A Chicago-based group had launched #Dontdrinkballast on social media in an attempt to boycott Constellation Brands’ Ballast Point beers — which the company purchased for $1 billion in 2015 — after Constellation Brands’ political action committee (PAC) “donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the campaigns and PACs of Paul Ryan, House majority leader Kevin McCarthy, and many of their Republican colleagues” during 2016.

They were upset about Ryan’s proposed — and, ultimately, shelved — plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with another health-care plan that eliminated many of Obamacare’s benefits.

However, instead of asking Constellation Brands directly why it had made a $25,000 donation to Ryan, it glossed over a $5,000 donation to Democrat and Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth’s “Victory Fund” PAC and a combined $6,500 to Illinois Democratic House Reps. Danny K. Davis, Mike Quigley, Daniel Lipinski and Robin Kelly. They even confessed to being largely ignorant of the reasons why Constellation Brands would make such a donation:

“So, why does Ballast Point put so much money into politics? What are they after? We don’t know the full answer right now, but we can demand answers.”

They could have ... but they didn’t. Instead, after several exchanges with friends on social media, I received an unsolicited message on Facebook
FB, -1.82%
from Kris White, a spokesman for San Diego-based Ballast Point.

“Ballast Point does not support Paul Ryan, nor the health-care bill,” he said. “While our parent company, Constellation, does have a PAC that contributes to candidates on both sides of the aisle, it does so only in the interest of policy issues directly related to the beverage alcohol industry. The PAC’s primary goal is to educate lawmakers on the benefits of our industry as a whole — creating jobs and contributing to our economy.”

The #Dontdrinkballast people eventually received a similar reply, and responded with a post titled “taking down Goliath.” Whatever curiosity the group held about the motivation behind Constellation Brands’ donation had evaporated and was replaced by the following admission: “... [T]his boycott isn’t about Ballast Point at all. No, this boycott is about taking down the multibillion dollar corporation that profits from Ballast’s beer sales and uses those profits to push the American people out of the political process.”

Well, I hate to break this to you, chuckles, but you’re probably going to have to boycott all beer if you really want to take the money out of politics. If a brewer has a political dilemma that needs to be resolved or has an issue that they want to bring to a politician’s attention, they’re going to lobby to do so — and that even includes small craft brewers.

First, a little bit of political science for the uninitiated: Any individual can give $2,700 to a candidate; $5,000 to a PAC; $10,000 to a state, district or local party; $33,400 to a national party committee; or $100,200 per additional national party committee account per year. A multi-candidate PAC, meanwhile, can give $5,000 a year to any individual candidate or PAC, but is limited to $5,000 a year to small party committees, $15,000 to national committees and $45,000 to their additional accounts. Brewers and their interest groups tend to lobby and donate both as individuals and as PACs.

Intraday Data provided by SIX Financial Information and subject to terms of use.
Historical and current end-of-day data provided by SIX Financial Information.
All quotes are in local exchange time. Real-time last sale data for U.S. stock quotes reflect trades reported through Nasdaq only.
Intraday data delayed at least 15 minutes or per exchange requirements.